Boko Haram leader says ruling Nigerian town by Islamic law

ABUJA: The leader of Nigeria’s Islamist group Boko Haram said his fighters were now ruling the captured northeastern town of Gwoza “by Islamic law”, in the first video to state a territorial claim in more than five years of violent insurrection.The Nigerian military denied Boko Haram had taken control of the town during fighting over the past week, although security sources and some witnesses said police and military there had been pushed out.Abubakar Shekau’s forces have killed thousands since launching an uprising in 2009, and are seen as the biggest security threat to the continent’s leading energy producer. The militant leader’s often rambling videoed speeches have become a regular feature of his bid to project himself as public enemy number one in Africa’s biggest economy. In the latest one released late on Sunday, the militant who says he is fighting to create an Islamic state in religiously-mixed Nigeria, said his forces had taken control of the hilly border town of Gwoza, near the frontier with Cameroon.“Allah has granted us success in Gwoza because we have risen to do Allah’s work,” Shekau says, reading out a statement off a notebook, with two masked gunmen on each side of him and three four-wheel-drive vehicles behind him in thinly forested bush.“Allah commands us to rule Gwoza by Islamic law. In fact, he commands us to rule the rest of the world, not only Nigeria, and now we have started.”Nigerian authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Local newspaper ThisDay quoted Major-General Chris Olukolade as saying the claim Boko Haram controls Gwoza was “false and empty”.The video includes footage of what appeared to be an attack on Gwoza, showing fighters, backed by armored personal carriers, pick-up trucks with attached machine guns, and one tank-like vehicle with track wheels and a large gun.They unload salvos of gunfire all over the town from trucks and on foot. The fighters are all armed with AK-47s or rocket propelled grenades, some in military uniform, others in civilian clothes. Many of them walk casually as they take over the town.